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Toronto police board asks for public input on carding

The Toronto Police board will hold a public meeting in November to discuss the controversial police practice of carding.

Former Mayor John Sewell of the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition, seen here in a 2012 file photo, said he was disappointed police are talking more training and not rethinking the nature of carding itself. (RENE JOHNSTON / TORONTO STAR) | Order this photo

After more than a year of failed attempts and under a growing wake of criticism, the Toronto police board is now opting to involve the public in a bid to make the force more accountable for its controversial use of carding.

Board members voted Monday to invite residents to a city hall meeting in November to discuss the street checks and consider 31 police proposals to improve a practice in which blacks — and to a lesser extent brown people — are disproportionately stopped and documented.

The proposals, the result of an 18-month internal review by the force, include more training for officers with the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS), as well as early mentoring and training for officers who show signs of racial bias.

Other measures include purging the personal information recorded by police during the street check — details which are entered into a massive investigative database — after seven years.

Some rights advocates who attended Monday’s police services board meeting, where the police plan was rolled out in a PowerPoint presentation, say it’s not enough.

John Sewell of the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition began his deputation by noting that very little time was given to digest and properly respond to the police plan that was posted late Friday to the board’s web site.

He later told reporters he was disappointed police are talking more training and not rethinking the nature of carding itself.

“The (police) culture eats that training for breakfast,” said Sewell.

Police defended TAVIS, a program that includes intense flooding of specialized “rapid response” officers into violent neighbourhoods and cards heavily.

“I appreciate that policing, through TAVIS, has reduced crime but the quality of that policing has eroded trust,” said board member Marie Moliner, who asked Deputy Chief Peter Sloly what the TAVIS of the future will looks like.

There will be greater supervision, better deployment and better training, said Sloly, who led the internal police review. He noted that the provincially funded program is under review and had been changed since Blair introduced it in 2006.

The force has been reviewing carding since February 2012. At that point, the Star had shared with police findings of an analysis that showed blacks were more likely than whites to be carded by police in each of Toronto’s 70-plus police patrol zones. The likelihood increased in predominantly white areas.

The police internal review delayed an independent assessment of carding by the city’s auditor general, which many advocates felt would give weight to the Star’s findings and create a benchmark going forward.

Roger Love, a lawyer with the African Canadian Legal Clinic, applauded the force’s proposal Monday to create a standing advisory committee to work with police to address racial profiling, as well as community surveys to evaluate levels of public trust.

Love was also positive about the force’s proposal to monitor officers for racial bias, but in a statement to the Star he expressed concerns about TAVIS.

“Given the frequency that TAVIS officers stop African Canadians for ‘General Investigations,’ the community’s sense that they are being profiled holds serious weight,” Love wrote.

The force also proposes to get rid of the contact card — called a Form 306 — which is used to record personal details during a street check. Instead, officers would make notations in their memo books.

Knia Singh, a law student who filed freedom of information requests and received data on himself from eight contact cards, was left “very disappointed” at the meeting that the board and police have not yet addressed the carding practice and with the fact that police are now “reframing” carding as “community safety notes.”

“If you were engaging the community, that would be a positive note,” he said. “But when you stop people randomly and harass them and ask them for information and intimidate them into giving that information, it’s disappointing,” said Singh, who was featured in the latest Star series and has never been arrested or charged with a criminal offence.

Sloly acknowledged the “social costs” associated with carding citizens, which steadily increased from 2008 to 2012. More than 300,000 individuals were carded at least once in 2012, the Star analysis found.

“These encounters have raised general community concerns about police accountability and transparency,” he told the board. “It’s also resulted in longstanding specific concerns from the black community about racial profiling. We acknowledge that. We’re determined to stamp that out.”

The police service “continues to acknowledge that racial profiling is illegal, immoral and intolerable,” said Sloly.

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